LORDY RODRIGUEZ ::::
born in 1976, Quezon city, Manila, Philippines
lives and works in Palo Alto

Cartography is the central theme of Rodriguez’s work. Appropriating the visual image from cartography, he examines the semiotics of the image. Cartography’s history reflects and influences society and parallels art history. By using cartographic symbols, Rodriguez experiments with those histories and examines the conceptual potential that results from the experimentation. Abstracting the formal qualities of maps while ignoring the signifying purpose the map was created for, the work challenges the roles that maps and art play. In one series called America, Rodriguez reconfigures the cities, states, and roads in the United states, adding five extra states and bringing the final count to 55, which was the national speed limit at the beginning of the series. It is a fitting homage since the visual language of cartography appropriated was the road map, and most US cities revolve their urban planning around the car. The five extra states are places or assumed places that have a kind of sovereignty to them—Disney World, Hollywood, Monopoly (using the popular game as a metaphor for the corporate world), the internet, and a separate state that had all the places that the US had occupied over the years like Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The result is a body of work that questions regional and national identity, the history and culture of the US, the relationship the US has with other countries in a global society, and the placement of nonutilitarian art in a utilitarian world. For “Making Our Place,” Rodriguez will create a sitespecific installation expanding on his mapping paintings.